[troymc]

Yes, I think that's the most interesting part of the Intel proposal. Rather than using lots of energy to compute a gazillion hashes (the work in Proof of Work), they rely on special processors to prove that they've waited for some amount of time (Proof of Elapsed Time). (The time is a random variable with known distribution.) That takes way less energy (cost). It's clever.

It got me thinking of other ways for computers to prove that a certain amount of time has passed, and I came up with this idea that takes advantage of the finite speed of light:

https://github.com/hyperledger/hyperledger/issues/18